{"id":1848,"date":"2012-03-15T05:00:35","date_gmt":"2012-03-15T10:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/foodiecuisine.com\/wordpress\/?p=1848"},"modified":"2012-03-15T16:55:57","modified_gmt":"2012-03-15T21:55:57","slug":"indian-pickle-intense-flavor-in-a-jar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/foodiecuisine.com\/wordpress\/tips-and-tricks\/indian-pickle-intense-flavor-in-a-jar\/","title":{"rendered":"Indian Pickle – Intense Flavor in a Jar!"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Todd Barron @ FoodieCuisine.com<\/h4>\n
\"\"<\/a>

Indian Pickle<\/p><\/div>\n

Forget what you think about pickles, especially when it comes to \u201cIndian Pickle.\u201d\u00a0 I visit Star of India, in the evening for dinner (not the buffet,) and have been doing so for the past 20 years.\u00a0 Almost every time I ask for the food to be spicy.\u00a0\u00a0Every time I ask, I receive food that may be spicy for my son, but is not close to being spicy enough for me.\u00a0 A year ago this changed.<\/p>\n

One night, my Chicken Tikka Masala arrives and is dark red.\u00a0 Usually it is pink and the redness typically means one thing, it\u2019s hot from the chili spices.\u00a0 Sure enough, its spicy and tastes wonderful.\u00a0 I am not crying from the\u00a0spice but it gives me the sniffles.<\/p>\n

As it turns out, I was given the wrong order.\u00a0 The table next to me, full of natives from India, had ordered the same thing.\u00a0 The server accidentally gave me the \u201cIndian spice\u201d food.\u00a0 When I told Sammy (the manager,) he offered to replace my food.\u00a0 No!\u00a0 I did not want it replaced but wanted to know how to ask for it in the future, and even spicier next time.\u00a0 After half an hour of discussion, Sammy was convinced I like spicy food and promised to make it hot in the future.\u00a0 He told me to ask for it using a scale of 1-10.\u00a0 The next time I at there, I ordered a 20.<\/p>\n

After several weeks of wonderfully spicy dishes, Sammy tells me he has a special surprise for me.\u00a0 He promises I will love it.\u00a0 With my dinner he brings a small side dish of very dark, chopped vegetables.\u00a0 They are covered in spice and oil and are pungent.\u00a0 It reminds me of kimchi<\/a>\u00a0but with Indian spices.\u00a0 Sammy explains to tear off a piece of naan<\/a> (flatbread,) put some of my Chicken Tikka Masala on it, and then add some of the \u201cpickle\u201d.<\/p>\n

Wow!\u00a0 The flavor is\u00a0amazing.\u00a0 The\u00a0naan smooths everything out while the chicken adds the needed texture and spice, offset by the tanginess of the pickled vegetables (which as\u00a0spicy as well.)\u00a0\u00a0Everything in the bite works perfectly together and I have found my new favorite food.\u00a0 Frankly, I do not know how I enjoyed Indian food until this point.\u00a0 It is a game changer for me and something I will use always going forward.<\/p>\n

Sammy explains they make the pickle by chopping and covering vegetables in mustard oil, mixed in with many spices, and left to ferment for\u00a0several weeks (and months.)\u00a0 \u00a0 The result is a very intense chutney of sorts which enhances any savory Indian dish.\u00a0 I\u2019ve even tried it on frozen Indian meals (from Kroger) and it makes them edible.\u00a0 They aren\u2019t the greatest, but for lunch at work they are not too bad.<\/p>\n

You can buy the pickle from Indian grocery stores.\u00a0 Just be sure you get the actual pickle spice and not American style pickles.\u00a0 I had to ask the lady at the Indian grocery store three times before she took me to the isle with Indian Pickle (she kept pointing me to the American style pickles!)\u00a0 The funny part is they had about 200 jars of Indian Pickle.\u00a0 I guess most Americans in my area do not ask for Indian Pickle!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Todd Barron @ FoodieCuisine.com Forget what you think about pickles, especially when it comes to \u201cIndian Pickle.\u201d\u00a0 I visit Star of India, in the evening for dinner (not the buffet,) and have been doing so for the past 20 years.\u00a0 Almost every time I ask for the food to be spicy.\u00a0\u00a0Every time I ask, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[332,6],"tags":[621,62,620,521,619],"class_list":["post-1848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-indian-cuisine","category-tips-and-tricks","tag-flavor","tag-indian","tag-pickle","tag-spice","tag-vegetable"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/foodiecuisine.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/foodiecuisine.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/foodiecuisine.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/foodiecuisine.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/foodiecuisine.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1848"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/foodiecuisine.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1848\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1857,"href":"http:\/\/foodiecuisine.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1848\/revisions\/1857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/foodiecuisine.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/foodiecuisine.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/foodiecuisine.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}